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Hellenic Folklore Research Centre

The Folklore Archive was founded in 1918 by Nicolaos G. Politis, with Stilpon Kyriakidis as first Director.

In 1926 the Folklore Archive and the National Music Collection, founded in 1914, were placed under the aegis of the Academy of Athens.
In 1944 the Senate of the Academy of Athens approved of the first Regulations for the Operation of the Folklore Archive, compiled by Georgios Megas.
In 1966 the Folklore Archive was renamed the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre (Law 4545/1966). In 1967, the Senate of the Academy of Athens approved of a new set of Operation Regulations.
In accordance with the Law on Research (Law 1894/1990), the personnel of the Centre, formally referred to as compilers, were renamed Research Staff and assigned positions on the basis of committee review. Since 1996, thanks to the assistance afforded by European Community programmes, the Centre has been modernising its operation and digitalising its rich archival material. Such programmes include the Development and Modernisation of Library and Archive, the Information Society and the Culture 2000 European Community Programmes.

The aims of the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre are the following:

To collect all published texts on folk culture, to extract any relevant information and to compile bibliographies.

To enrich unpublished material drawn from oral tradition through fieldwork, through such means as the institution of competitions and the circulation of questionnaires.

To preserve in their original form or in copy the texts of the Folklore Collections of the Centre.

To classify in separate archives the folklore material which has been extracted in such a manner that it is accessible to research.

To publish the Annual of the Research Centre for Hellenic Folklore and various independent scholarly publications in the form of books, maps, records, DVDs, etc.